The families in thousands of homes in Nairobi’s Nyayo estate stir as dawn rays hit their uniform rooftops.

Social entrepreneurs Maureen Amakabane and Njoki Mwangi are already on the move. They run Nyayo Moms Sokos (NMS), a social commerce platform for women-owned businesses that serves the estate’s residents. The traders sell goods via WhatsApp or Facebook.

Most global e-commerce systems rely on Western-built tech to reduce the risks typically associated with anonymous online transactions. However, the use of regional fintech ecosystems is rising around the world.

Amakabane, Mwangi and the other NMS co-founder, Martha Owuor, prioritise social collateral instead.

Their initiative is powered by a low-entry tech stack that leverages social media, mobile money payments, specialised business training and neighbourhood events.

The three women initially created NMS to support other ‘mom-preneurs’ in 2019. They significantly formalised and gained momentum in 2020.

The growth was largely driven by the Covid-19 pandemic, which accelerated the need for a vetted digital community, where residents of Nyayo estate could trade safely and reliably. NMS now has around 5,570 registered users.

Owuor runs a home renovations business. As a pioneer member of the Nyayo Embakasi Residents Association, she has been involved in the estate's administration and governance since 2001.

“Nyayo Embakasi is one of the largest estates in East and Central Africa, perhaps even Southern,” she says.

“We have about 4,800 houses in a gated community with three gates. So that gives us a population of about 20- to 25,000 people.”

HOW IT STARTED

A retired tourism professional, Owuor relied on her background in management and quality control to establish operational and governance systems that give visibility to businesses that were previously confined to private homes.

Women entrepreneurs first undergo a vetting process. Once cleared, they are given access to NMS’s WhatsApp markets and regular training on inventory management and digital marketing.

Finally, the platform facilitates the sale by connecting these verified vendors to a ready pool of buyers within the network. They also use data-driven tracking and human oversight to ensure every delivery and payment is completed reliably and safely.

Amakabane leads strategy, business development and training. She is a vocal advocate for leveraging technology to drive financial inclusion for African women, and has founded additional ventures, such as Usafi Sanitation Ltd, while also serving as a storyteller instructor with The Moth.

“We’ve created a very safe space where women can come in and transact,” she says.

“We want women to feel they can walk into the community even with an idea and trade and transact without feeling that it’s too small or it’s too big. So that’s a metric for us for success.”

They have seen businesses birthed in the platform, and because there’s an existing marketplace, they are able to trade, transact and grow their business, she said.

Njoki Mwangi is a certified marriage and family therapist with a legal background, holding a bachelor of laws (LLB) and a master of arts in marriage and family therapy.

As a community leader for Nyayo Moms Sokos, she advocates for mental well-being and provides legal consultancy to support the holistic growth of women entrepreneurs.

The rise in mental illnesses and family dysfunction during Covid pushed her to advertise her practice on NMS and encourage the platform's diversification from food and household goods.

“That's the first time I thought, ‘How do I bring in my legal services and my mental health [expertise]?’" Mwangi says.

Very few people knew her as a lawyer and counsellor, only the ones she could interact with.

“So I started working on my flyers and advertising myself,” she says.

PANDEMIC LIFELINE

NMS is a lifeline for women like Faith Siele. When her husband’s surgery left their family without its sole breadwinner, Siele transformed her baking hobby into a professional brand.

The results were quantifiable. While Siele was away on a leadership programme in India for eight months, her business grew five times over — a testament to the formalised systems NMS helps women build.

"I had been a home baker, and when I got this shop, believe it or not, I would lock myself inside because I was the only employee and I was so scared of being overwhelmed by orders,” she recounts.

“So I would close my doors and bake, and I would take my two orders a day very comfortably.”

She opened the shop in 2019, and then Covid happened in 2020.

“By then I had joined Nyayo Moms Soko, and to be honest, when people were closing, when Covid shut all business, there were no events,” Siele says.

“We moved from catering for weddings of a thousand to 20, 50 people. Nyayo Moms kept my business running.”

NMS’s founders say 32 per cent of the women registered on their platform have successfully transitioned from informal ‘side hustles’ to growing businesses.

Amakabane and the other founders are tight-lipped about revenues for women's protection.

Men are charged a premium to sell on the platform but do not have access to other benefits, such as training.

GENDER INCLUSIVITY

Closing the gender gap in sales between men and women vendors on African e-commerce platforms could add $14.5 billion (Sh1.8 trillion) to the e-commerce market between 2025 and 2030, according to the International Finance Corporation.

Dr Shiko Gitau, CEO of the Nairobi-based tech agency Qhala, works with African organisations like NMS to scale using data-driven strategies and emerging technologies.

She argues that African tech solutions often falter when they are not grounded in the continent's specific social nuances.

"They've extended this social trust and collateral to women who are in their ecosystem and their community,’" Dr Gitau says.

“Such that if I say, ‘I'm a Nyayo Moms’ mum or trader’ or ‘I'm selling in Nyayo Moms’ market or soko,’ people will trust me because Nyayo Moms is known.

“And I can go to Nyayo Moms or Nyayo estate and say, ‘I want to talk to Maureen. Maureen, I bought my handbag from this person and it's torn. You see? That is the assurance that somebody wants in their head.”

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development reported last year that high operational costs and unreliable Internet prevent many women-led firms from moving beyond social commerce to formal e-commerce platforms.

The three women are already working on a project that adapts and scales their successful hyperlocal framework to help ensure that the ‘invisible’ work of Africa’s women-led SMEs becomes a formalised, measurable driver of the continent’s growing digital economy.

"The affirmation is from day-to-day interactions with the women as you just walk in the community and see the women and their business grow,” Amakabane says.

“Even myself, when I look at when I started the business and now, I'm a totally different person. So even just being able to shift the business to meet more of the customer needs than when I was starting is progress."